chicks in a trug

A few days ago we had our second (last?) hatch of the year, 15/16 – and they fairly charged out of their eggshells, unlike the last hatch which was a bit slow and troublesome. This lot are crossbreeds, all from the blue marans cockerel, and crossed with welsummers and welsummerxbuff leghorn.

Partly I just wanted to see what colour combinations we got – I spend a fair bit of time playing with this genetic predictor program – I could get very nerdy and into chicken genetics… and partly the ongoing quest to find the best combination to get replacement laying hens and decent weight cockerels at 20 weeks. A lot of the heavier meat birds seem to need a big longer, but 20 weeks is our limit on listening to multiple cock crowing.

I was cleaning their box out today (lack of broodies means these will be hand reared), and put them in the trug on the windowsill whilst room service was going on, and they looked so cute peering out at the world, that I could not resist taking a picture.